Glasgow
Category: Land + PeopleBy G. Rae and C. Brown
Glasgow is the third largest city of Great Britain. Everywhere, its full vigour and industrial energy is at once manifest, in its shipyards and workshops, spacious and old, in its factories, well laid out and modern, in its streets of huge tenements and in its great suburbs. The city extends along both banks of the river Clyde. With each phase of its development, it has stretched, almost like an unburstable balloon, until its outskirts now lie several miles from the city centre. It is, by far, the largest and most populous city in the whole of Scotland. Glasgow is known the world over for its ship-building. Its shipyards, lining both banks of the river, turn out all sorts of vessels.
In huge workshops and forges, Glasgow engineers design and produce an amazing variety of heavy steel manufactures. Glasgow-built locomotives run in every part of the world. Scotland’s only motor manufacturing factory is situated in Glasgow.
Far too numerous for special mention are the other industries of Glasgow.
The development of light industry, distinct from the traditional preoccupation with heavy industry, is a noteworthy feature of Glasgow,
The industrial estates are modern in appearance and they are smoke-free since they rely on electricity as their source of power.
Today Glasgow is of such a size that it extends far over both banks of the river Clyde and bridges are as essential for the conduct of activities as are the people themselves. Within a distance of a mile there are seven bridges. They carry road and rail traffic in and out of the city but even with an underground railway passenger service and a number of vehicular and passenger ferries, the congestion of road traffic is such that additional crossings are necessary. No other city of Scotland has or needs as many river crossings as Glasgow.
From Geography of Scotland, London, 1959.